This invention generally relates to systems and methods for identifying video segments being displayed on a screen of a television system, and to systems and methods for providing contextually targeted content to television systems based on such video segment identification. As used herein, the term “television systems” includes, but is not limited to, televisions such as web TVs and connected TVs and equipment collocated with or incorporated in the television, such as a set-top box (STB), a DVD player or a digital video recorder (DVR). As used herein, the term “television signals” includes signals representing video and audio data which are broadcast together (with or without metadata) to provide the picture and sound components of a television program or commercial. As used herein, the term “metadata” means data about or relating to the video/audio data in television signals.
Recent advancements in fiber optic and digital transmission technology have enabled the television industry to increase channel capacity and provide some degree of interactive television service. This advancement is due in large part to the industry combining the processing power of a computer in the form of a STB and the large information-carrying capacity of cables. Such STBs have successfully been used by the television industry to provide both a greater selection of channels and some degree of interactivity.
The technology of Interactive Television (ITV) has been developed in an attempt to allow a television (TV) set to serve as a two-way information distribution mechanism. Features of an ITV accommodate a variety of marketing, entertainment, and educational capabilities such as allowing a user to order an advertised product or service, compete against contestants in a game show, and the like. Typically, the interactive functionality is controlled by an STB which executes an interactive program written for the TV broadcast. The interactive functionality is often displayed on the TV's screen and may include icons or menus to allow a user to make selections via the TV's remote control or a keyboard.
In accordance with one known technique, the interactive content can be incorporated into the broadcast stream (also referred to herein as the “channel/network feed”). In the present disclosure, the term “broadcast stream” refers to the broadcast signal (analog or digital) received by a television, regardless of the method of transmission of that signal, e.g., by antenna, satellite, cable, or any other method of analog or digital signal transmission. One known method of transparently incorporating interactive content into a broadcast stream is the insertion of triggers into the broadcast stream for a particular program. Program content in which such triggers have been inserted is sometimes referred to as enhanced program content or as an enhanced TV program or video signal. Triggers may be used to alert an STB that interactive content is available. The trigger may contain information about available content as well as the memory location of the content. A trigger may also contain user-perceptible text that is displayed on the screen, for example, at the bottom of the screen, which may prompt the user to perform some action or choose amongst a plurality of options.
Connected TVs are TVs that are connected to the Internet via the viewer's home network (wired or wireless). Interactive web-type applications run on these TVs. There are several competing connected TV platforms. Yahoo is the most prominent one (see http://connectedtv.yahoo.com/). The basic common features of such connected TV platforms are: (1) a connection to the Internet; and (2) the ability to run software on top of the TV display. Several TVs with this support are already in the market (e.g., LG, Samsung and Vizio have models out). Many more will enter the market in the near future. Industry observers expect all new TVs to have these features within a few years.
Connected TVs can run an application platform such as the Yahoo widget engine, Flash Lite (see http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/), Google Android, or proprietary platforms. A developer community builds widgets to run on this platform. A widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or text box. A widget engine is an operating system on which widgets run. As used herein, the term “widget” refers to code that runs on a widget engine. Each widget runs its own system process, so that one widget can be shutdown without affecting other widgets. The widget engine may include a feature called a “dock”, which shows a respective icon for each available widget. TV widgets allow a television viewer to interact with the television, e.g., by requesting additional information relating to the subject matter being viewed, without switching the viewer's context from watching a television program to entering an application. In response to such a request, the requested information is displayed as part of the visual representation of the widget on the television screen.
Currently virtually all TVs (connected or otherwise) do not have any metadata on what the viewer is watching. While some information is available in bits and pieces in the content distribution pipeline, by the time a show reaches the screen, all information other then video and audio has been lost. In particular, the TV does not know what channel or show the viewer is watching, nor what the show is about. (The channel and show information a person sees on his/her screen is grafted on the STB from sometimes incomplete information.) This barrier is the result of the fundamental structure of the TV content distribution industry. This is a severe issue for interactive TVs since it limits their scope to strictly pull functionality.
There is a need for improvements in systems and methods for identifying what video segment is being viewed on a television. There is also a need for improvements in systems and methods of providing contextually targeted content to a connected television system.